Another day in Europe, more mixed messages on just how Western allies in the NATO-led Libyan air intervention plan to end a campaign that has now officially attained “slog” status. Just hours after comments Tuesday from British officials saying they’d accept embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi remaining free in post-war Libya so long …
Middle East
The Knights Templar: The Militant Order Championed by Norway’s Terror Suspect
Anders Behring Breivik’s massive, 1,500-pg “2083” manifesto carries within it many odd and jarring tidbits, but nothing piques curiosity more than the Norwegian terror suspect’s obsession with the Knights Templar, a militant-monastic order that participated with bloody effect in the medieval Crusades. Breivik — who is …
Why Norway Terror Accused Breivik Says he Loves Israel
There was a time when a blond, blue-eyed nationalist looking to violently rid Europe of its “alien” immigrant population could be reliably assumed to hate Jews. It’s no longer quite that simple.
Anders Behring Breivik insists, in his rambling 1,500-page manifesto released on the day of his confessed rampage that killed 76 …
The West Slowly Backing Away From the Libyan Military Operation
It’s getting harder and harder to believe there’ll eventually be a resolution to Libya’s civil war that will allow anyone to claim Muammar Gaddafi lost to rebel forces—or was humbled by members of the NATO-led coalition waging air strikes against him. Indeed, it’s becoming increasingly clear as the weeks rush by that …
Israel’s ‘Threat’ to Bomb Nuclear Facilities is Central to its Iran Strategy
The reason TIME.com’s intelligence columnist Bob Baer this week found himself cast as the unintended source for “authoritative” claims that Israel is about to bomb Iran, is precisely because what he said had been speculative comments inadvertently played into the game of bluff at the heart of the matter. Bob saw an implicit warning …
France’s Counter-Terrorism Ace Finds Himself Under Scrutiny
For the past three decades he’s been known as “The Sheriff”, “The Admiral”, and more generally as the world-famous icon of French counter-terrorism. The pipe-smoking, Magnum-packing judge became counter-terrorism’s international celebrity through exploits that included (but were far from limited to) tracking down and …
Sure, ‘Gaddafi Must Go’, But What Else Did U.S. Officials Tell the Libyan Leader’s Envoys?
Washington insists that the U.S. officials who met with representatives of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Tunisia last week were not negotiating; they simply went to deliver one message: “Gaddafi must go.” There’s no reason to doubt that this demand was the center-piece of what the Americans told Gaddafi’s emissaries, since Obama …
The Dead Sea: Deader Than Ever
There is dead and there is dying. The Dead Sea manages both.
It’s dead because the water in it contains way, way too much salt — eight times as much as the oceans — for virtually any living thing to survive. With a shoreline at the lowest land point on the globe — 1,388 ft. (423 m) below sea level — and no outlet, millennia of …
Syria: Schisms and Rancor Shape the Contours of a Bloody Conflict
In her most recent TIME article, Rania Abouzeid explains why the chance of a nonviolent resolution to political conflict in Syria is increasingly unlikely: even as embattled President Bashar Assad holds nominal talks with minor opposition groups, tanks remain in the street and his troops continue to mow down unarmed protestors. In the …
Will Egypt’s Military Hijack its Revolution?
Turkey, with its pluralistic democracy and booming economy under the stewardship of a moderate Islamist party, is hailed as the model for post-Mubarak Egypt by many leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. But the latest initiatives by the 25-man military junta that has ruled since February’s ouster of President Hosni Mubarak suggests that …
What Comes After the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process?
An Italian philosopher once remarked that moments when “the old is dying and the new cannot be born” are marked by a “great variety of morbid symptoms”. Watching the machinations of the Obama Administration and its allies, the Palestinian leadership and its rivals, and the Israeli government ahead of a planned U.N. vote on …
Is the CIA Helping Run a Secret Prison in Somalia?
An interesting exposé in The Nation, the left-of-center U.S. newsweekly, explores how the CIA has participated in the running of secret detention and interrogation centers in Somalia. The article’s author, Jeremy Scahill, claims the CIA mans an operation in a “sprawling walled compound” by Mogadishu’s airport and sends out …
From the Magazine: The Rise of Moderate Islam
As we wait for the Salafi leader Kamal Habib at the Cairo Journalists’ Union, a sudden panic comes over me. I’ve just noticed that my translator, Shahira Amin, an Egyptian journalist, is wearing a sleeveless top and that her hair is uncovered. In my experience, Salafis, adherents of a very strict school of Islam, take a dim view of such …